When Bruce Zalkin, a 59-year-old New Yorker who has lived in Florida since 1976, sees the earliest version of the original Barbie doll from 1959, he can spot the subtle differences. The difference can make the difference between a doll worth thousands of dollars and a doll worth pennies.
The first version of the doll – with downcast eyes, blond curls in a ponytail, and a black-and-white striped bathing suit – had holes for her feet so she could be attached to a stand; in the second version, after the children eventually destroyed After the stand, the leaks were patched; the third version of Barbie wore mascara, while the fourth version was the first to be made from a vinyl plastic compound instead of polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
Zalkin began his Barbie Land journey in his 20s while running a toy store in Tampa filled with cast-iron Tonkin trucks and antiques. It was the early 1990s, and his staff consisted mostly of older women, who convinced him to focus on Barbie’s complexity and appeal.
“They taught me everything about Barbie,” Zalkin told me wealth,”Everything I wanted to know and more.
Zalkin has been selling Barbie dolls for more than 30 years now, developing a talent for discerning the subtle differences between the earliest versions of Mattel’s star bombshell. But he’s been selling toys informally since he was young, learning the trade from influential women in his life: At age 5, his grandmother taught him her hobby in his home state of New York Collected glassware, pottery, and statues in Liberty City; at age 5, his grandmother taught him to collect glassware, pottery, and statues; at 13, after the family moved to Tampa, he considered it “old lady’s stuff” and Start buying and selling toys.
Contributed by Bruce Zalkin(2)
He has a 40-year career as an antique toy dealer and now specializes in a line of Barbie dolls – mostly retro models with charming downturned eyes and feathery blond ponytails. Over the years, Zalkin estimates he has sold $2 million worth of vintage Barbie dolls through eBay, toy fairs and auctions. While it’s not a career he’d encourage others to join (it’s “not a good investment,” he says), he’s successfully capitalized on the doll’s charm, variety, and nuance, as well as its lucrative market power, to create A sustainable industry.
“I’m not really a Barbie collector, I’m more of a dealer,” he told us wealth. “This is how I make a living.”
Buyers of his vintage Barbies range from people who miss the dolls they grew up with, or were not allowed to buy, to professional collectors.
“There are kids whose parents will never buy them a Barbie,” Zalkin said.
In addition, Mattel launched collector-specific lines in the 1980s, including limited-edition dolls designed by famous fashion designer Bob Mackie and silk models released in the 2000s. Those are usually sports bras, Zalkin said, “and were never meant for children.”
However, they are “highly sought after by collectors” and are selling for up to 400 pieces on eBay.
Find rare items
Finding the right collectible can take some work, since the rare dolls Zalkin seeks are difficult to find at yard sales or on social media.
This week, Zalkin visited a Florida woman’s collection of more than 150 dolls, which she decided to sell when she moved because her children had outgrown the dolls. Zalkin brought along Marl Davidson, a friend of 38 years who he calls “the No. 1 dealer in the world.”
When Chalkin examined the dolls, he said, “She didn’t have any super rare items,” but luckily for him, most of the dolls were vintage, meaning they were released before the 1980s.
Zalkin and Davidson paid about $4,000 for the collection. After purchasing, the pair spent about two hours packing the dolls, wrapping them individually in paper or plastic (so “we don’t mess up their hair”) and making zipper bags for the doll accessories.
What follows is the next stage of the doll’s journey: rehoming. “This will take several months to sort out,” Zalkin said. “We bought 100 pairs of shoes, all in little bags, and had to sort them to see if they were vintage or modern because people paid very different amounts depending on the shoe.”
He said the accessories often sell for more than just a piece of clothing, and sometimes even the doll itself, because “those are the first things to get lost or sucked away.”
What makes Barbie worth the money?
Zalkin said the answer often depends on how well-liked she is, how rare the edition is and whether her clothes carry Mattel’s signature pink Barbie label.
“To this day, all clothes are tagged,” he said. In the 1960s, he added, “Mattel sold pattern books so women could make clothes for Barbie because it was cheaper than buying Mattel clothes.”
The rarity of Barbie costumes and editions can be the difference between a doll worth a few cents and over $5,000.
For example, in the 1960s, Mattel launched a line of Barbie dolls sold only in Japan. Zalkin said the clothes in the collection were “very expensive and very rare. I’ve only bought a few of them, but they sold thousands.
The Zalkin single doll sells for $10,000. He recalled an octogenarian couple’s lifetime collection – more than 500 items “in excellent condition, original dolls and clothes still in their original packaging” – which he sold, mostly, for $250,000 Sold to a private collector.
Vintage Barbie dolls, especially the earliest versions, are often the most valuable. An original 1959 Barbie doll in mint condition is worth $5,000 to $10,000, Zalkin said.
“There will be people who collect for investment, or they want items in good condition, and they will pay the highest premium for that,” he said. “Other collectors just want the doll, get it for a tenth of the price, and then they’ll redo their makeup, redo their hair, and get the doll they want.”
To be sure, the job is not without its challenges. Zalkin said one of the biggest challenges is finding collectibles or inventory to purchase. Most of his business comes through word of mouth, with sites like Facebook Marketplace and Craiglist accounting for only a small portion of his sales. He also often buys back collections from people with whom he has made sales over decades, who contact him after life events such as death or divorce prompt them to part with their collections.
Greta Gerwig spawns a new breed of collectors
The release of Greta Gerwig’s highly anticipated Barbie movie last year brought more collectors into the market. Dolls featured in the movie, notably Pregnant Mickey and Grown-Up Captain (which has a twisting arm that allows her to grow taller and expand her breasts), have doubled in price.
“As soon as the movie came out, Barbie sales went up dramatically,” he said, adding that prices still haven’t returned to pre-movie levels.
Fan site Barbie Wiki estimates there are more than 100,000 Barbie collectors worldwide.
“The main market is older women,” Zalkin said, “either with new collectors brought in by new movies, older women whose brothers blew up their dolls with ‘G.I. Joe,’ or whose parents sold their dolls at garage sales.” of older women. “Believe it or not, the gay community also bought a lot of Barbie dolls. ”
The key to Barbie’s market influence
For better or worse, Barbie is an undisputed cultural icon. She has been the focus of museum exhibits and the subject of a Hulu documentary. Gerwig’s film grossed nearly $1.3 billion at the global box office, becoming one of the few female-led films to be among the highest-grossing films of all time. NPR reported.
The doll was also a game-changer for toymakers and little kids alike. According to historical records from Encyclopedia Britannica, dolls were common in the early 1950s and often encouraged young girls to imagine themselves as nurturers, mothers, or caregivers. However, Barbie is marketed as a woman who works in a variety of professions—such as a hospital volunteer, an astronaut, a surgeon, and an executive—with outfits to match. When kids play with her, they can imagine themselves in careers where there aren’t enough female representations.
Still, the doll maker has faced pushback for setting unrealistic body standards. Finnish researchers concluded that if a real woman had doll proportions, she wouldn’t have enough body fat to menstruate.
Mattel faced several seasons of plummeting sales between 2012 and 2018, and criticism continued as other companies produced dolls that better reflected the diversity of Americans in body shapes, colors and physical abilities. .
Sales began to pick up in the mid-2010s after Mattel introduced a wider variety of dolls. According to Mattel’s website, Barbie now has “the most diverse line of dolls,” with 35 skin tones, 97 hairstyles and nine body types to choose from. Since then, the brand has launched dolls with Down syndrome, prosthetics and wheelchairs.
It’s been decades since Zalkin first entered the world of Barbie as a seller, but he has no plans to give up. He recently started his own auction site, in part to avoid eBay’s rising seller fees, and runs more than 150 toy shows with his wife, Laura.
“When we go to buying shows, we sit behind tables and people come and sell their stuff,” he said. “Of course, if they had a Barbie, they would come up to my wife and she said, ‘My husband has a Barbie. I made all the cast iron trucks.
